*An aspirational and opulent Beaux Art setting in New York City, sipping some inspired wines, eating heavenly food, and catching up with my drinking buddies at the Windows on Long Island tasting.

Windows on Long Island Celebration

I don’t often leave the East End. When I do it has to be for a good reason, and drinking exceptional wine is my favorite reason. Motivated by that, I headed into New York on a rainy afternoon last week. The long bus trip did not put me in the best of moods, but the promise of some alluring food and wine at my destination kept me going.

That destination was Capitale, a banqueting facility in the sumptuous Bowery Savings Bank building on the Bowery in lower Manhattan, a Beaux Arts structure designed by Stanford White in 1893. This former cathedral of money now caters to our sensual pleasures, and it provided a spectacular setting for the 14 th annual Windows on Long Island celebration. The event showcases Long Island wines, and 29 producers were represented, pouring some lovely stuff. About an equal number of Long Island’s and New York’s finest restaurants and food purveyors supplied the bites to complement the wines.

What we ate and drank were, I am happy to report, quite up to the monumental aesthetic level of the setting. The crowd of about 500 ranged from stylish New York to North Fork farmer, and it too seemed most appropriate because the balance was right. My tasting buddies for various parts of the evening included Michael Aaron, an East Hampton resident who is the proprietor of Sherry-Lehmann Wines on Madison Avenue, David Lecompte, laboratory director at the Premium Wine Group, and Joe Czerwinski, Tasting Director of Wine Enthusiast magazine—all of whom offered interesting opinions.

I could not begin to describe—much less taste—all the wines. Some vineyards had as many as seven or eight wines on their tables, so there must have been close to 200 wines in total. But I can report on at least a scattered sampling of what was available. Understand, these are not necessarily the most important wines of the evening, but rather wines that caught my attention because they were not only well made but exhibited real personality, some kind of particularity that set them off from the crowd.

Channing Daughters of Bridgehampton, a winery with a decidedly artisanal bent, has over the years distinguished itself by producing small quantities of extraordinary white wines, often from grapes not seen elsewhere on Long Island. Their 2003 Pinot Grigio is a knockout, brisk, fresh, full-bodied and delicious. It restores my confidence in this grape, which on a commercial scale is so often overused in bland, mediocre wines. Shinn Estate Vineyards is a new venture in Mattituck by Barbara Shinn and David Page, who own Home, a popular Greenwich Village restaurant. They poured their newly released 2002 Young Vines Merlot, a surprisingly pleasant wine with an apt name. You don’t expect too serious an experience from a newborn wine made from grapes of immature vines, but Shinn’s simple wine delivered engaging fruit and a soft, inviting balance of flavors, and even had some structure. The promise is unmistakably there, and I look forward to seeing what they do in future harvests.

They might well aim to follow in the path of Chris and Ros Baiz of The Old Field. On their historic farm on Southold Bay, this couple produces limited quantities of some superb wines. The 1999 Pinot Noir that I sampled was silky and ingratiating, with lots of finesse, in the mold of a refined but young and drinkable Burgundy. Pellegrini Vineyards, a seasoned winery in Cutchogue, produces what might be called classic North Fork wines. Their 1998 Vinter’s Pride Encore was one of the champions of the evening, a rich, balanced blend with soft notes of black fruits and a captivating taste. The wine reflects the assured hand of an uncompromising winemaker and of a winery that knows where it is going.

Paumanok is another vineyard that has found its stride in recent years. Besides some outstanding red wines, they were offering their 2001 Sauvignon Blanc Late Harvest, a nuanced Sauternes type dessert wine, imbued with striking complexity and style. These wines are just a few of the highlights. All the familiar winery names from the East End were at Windows on Long Island; demonstrating that winemaking in this area has, like a substantial wine itself, improved, matured, and achieved a certain stature, a position of some consequence.